The modern dye processes are unsustainable and damaging to the environment. For thousands of years, vegetables, fruits, teas, and other plants have been used to make homemade dyes to use on fabrics and textiles. Leftover fruits and vegetables materials, such as peels and skins, beetroot, blueberries, avocado skins, spinach, red cabbage, brown onions, plums, grapes, nettles, hibiscus flowers, turmeric, used tea bags- are some of the organic ingredients used for creating natural dyes in a variety of colours.
You can mix and experiment with different plants, fruits and vegetables scraps to see what type of colours you can create for your homemade natural dyes. The intensity and shade will vary, depends on what and how fruits, vegetables and plants are combined.
Get started with this list of ingredients to plan your colour scheme.
Blue: Blueberries, Red cabbage
Brown: Used tea bags
Purple: Red onion skins, raspberries, blackberries
Pink: Beetroot, blackberries, raspberries
Green: Spinach, leafy greens, nettles
Red: Beetroot, red berries
Orange and yellow: Onion skins, rosemary, turmeric
Purple: Blueberries
Madder root: Pink, orange, red
Mangosteen peel: Crimson, brown, dark brown, green, purple